Spotlight & Giveaway: Radha & Jai’s Recipe for Romance by Nisha Sharma

Today it is my pleasure to Welcome author Nisha Sharma to HJ!

Hi Nisha and welcome to HJ! We’re so excited to chat with you about your new release, Radha & Jai’s Recipe for Romance!

Please summarize the book for the readers here:

Radha & Jai’s Recipe for Romance is a book about mourning a future dream you may never have and finding joy in something new. Radha is a former Kathak dancer who decides to learn about her food culture in order to stay connected with her father after she moves to New Jersey. She needs something to help manage her anxiety and fill the void that dance left behind. Jai is captain of the Bollywood dance team at school, and he needs a choreographer otherwise he’s letting the team down. This is his last chance to shine before he gives up his dreams to help run the family store. Radha and Jai find solace in each other, and an understanding that neither of them knew they needed. And of course, they fall in love all while creating a dance routine to remember.
 

Please share the opening lines of this book:

Radha had to pee.
Like, really bad.
Honestly, she should’ve predicted it after all the years she’d been dancing.

Please share a few Fun facts about this book…

• The Bollywood dance team starts a flash mob in the student cafeteria, and let’s just say the side character who does all of the flips at the beginning may have done the same routine that appears during the audition scene in the movie Bring it On.
• I ended up learning my food culture and cooking with my mother most nights while I wrote this book. I’d call her on facetime, prop the screen up next to my cooking station, and she’d walk me through everything from making paneer, to making chole. It was an amazing experience.
• The food mart that Jai’s family owns is modeled after the one that I used to go to when I lived in Metuchen, New Jersey.

Please tell us a little about the characters in your book. As you wrote your protagonist was there anything about them that surprised you?

I studied Kathak for years and when I stopped dancing, I would have so much anxiety around returning to the stage. I poured a lot of my own fears into Radha and the performance anxiety she experiences in the story. While writing the book, however, I was able to reconnect with some of the joy I felt with music, with Kathak, and with Bollywood dancing. And that was the biggest surprise I never expected.

What do you want people to take away from reading this book?

Radha learns to reconnect with her love of dance, but also heals through exploring other passions. Food, a source of comfort for so many in the South Asian community, was Radha’s avenue of healing and became her secondary passion. I think it’s important for all of us to remember that we don’t have to be good at one thing. We can try different passions because curiosity can be healing.

What are you currently working on? What other releases do you have planned?

My next novel is an adult rom com, Dating Dr. DIl. It’s the first book in the Shakespearean Aunties series that I’m writing with Avon. The story is inspired by Taming of the Shrew, and it comes out in March of 2022. Kareena and Prem share lots of laughs and sexy banter. Pre-orders are available now!
 

Thanks for blogging at HJ!

Giveaway: One print copy of Radha and Jai’s Recipe for Romance (US only)

To enter Giveaway: Please complete the Rafflecopter form and Leave a comment with your thoughts on the book. Thank you!

 
a Rafflecopter giveaway

 
 

Excerpt from Radha & Jai’s Recipe for Romance:

Copyright © 2021 Penguin Random House LLC. All Rights Reserved

London, England
January
Radha
Radha had to pee.
Like, really bad.
Honestly, she should’ve predicted it after all the years she’d been dancing. Every time she performed, her entire body re­acted . . . including her bladder. After nailing a routine she’d been working on for months at the International Kathak Clas­sics semifinals, the urge was particularly heinous.
And not a toilet in sight, she thought. Radha looked around backstage for her mother. If she disappeared without letting Su­jata Chopra know, the woman would have a meltdown. Sujata was even more high-strung about the competition than Radha was, since it had been her dream for Radha to perform. Being the best had never been a priority for Radha, though. The only thing that mattered to her was that she got the chance to dance.
“Hey, Farah,” Radha said to the stage manager rushing past her. “Have you seen my mother?”
Farah covered the mic attached to her ear and shook her head. “Did you need something?”
“I wanted to run to the dressing room for a moment. I have to p—uh, fix my anarkali.” She motioned to her long gown, which covered her from her neck to right above her ankles.
“If your mum asks, I’ll let her know where you are. Go ahead, love. You only have twenty minutes before you’ll have to be back in the wings again.”
“Thanks.”
Radha hurried down the stairs and into the basement under the stage. The hallways were empty since most of the contes­tants had left. There were only four semifinalists, so there was no point in the other contestants sticking around.
Her ghungroos, two hundred bells on each nylon cord wrapped around her ankles, chimed as she ran on her tiptoes toward the end of the hall. She paused halfway, horrified, just as the event DJ started to play hype music. An Indian classical-dance competition shouldn’t have hype music. It was a serious occasion, and random Bollywood movie songs cheapened such a prestigious event.
Holy Vishnu, I’m starting to think like my mother.
The basement walls vibrated with the sound, which drowned out Radha’s footsteps until she reached the dressing room.
She stepped through the doorway, and over the faded bass from the DJ upstairs she heard the sound of conversation com­ing from the other side of the lockers.
“Yeah, my mom sent me an SMS and said she did amaz­ing,” Diya said in her screechy voice. She was the oldest of the semifinalists—twelve years Radha’s senior—and had trained with her when they were in Rajasthan, India, a few years ago.
“She could dance like a gorilla and she’d still win,” Rippi said. “Haven’t you heard about her mother?”
“Sujata Roy Chopra? The famous kathak dancer, right? She stopped performing like twenty years ago. People forgot about her until Radha showed up, but from what it looks like, Su­jata controls Radha like a puppet.” Trish, a Canadian dancer, snorted. “It’s like her mother says do a chakkar, and Radha turns without question.”
Oh my God, Radha thought. They were talking about her. She froze, hoping that her ghungroos hadn’t given her away. All thoughts of bathroom visits disappeared.
“A few people from the committee told me that Sujata Cho­pra was seen with a principal judge after the celebratory cock­tail party,” Rippi said. “Apparently Radha’s mom and this judge were very, very friendly, if you know what I mean.”
“I don’t think I’m following,” Trish said. “Was it just flirting or . . . more?”
“Well, from what I was told, they left together. I believe it, too. Sujata Chopra has a reputation in the industry. She’d lie, cheat, and steal to make sure her daughter won.”
No. No way. Radha felt bile burning in the back of her throat. Her mother was a little pushy, but she would never betray Radha and her father like that.
Would she? The idea of her mother cheating . . . Oh my God.
“Gross,” Diya said. “It makes sense why we’ve all lost to her so many times, though. Remember the Singapore competition in May? Radha choreographed her own number, and it was awful. She still won, which confused everybody there.”
“I can definitely see her mother cheating for her to win in Singapore,” Trish said. “I wonder if Radha knows. Like, is she the kind of person who is okay with that? She must have an idea of what Sujata is doing. Or who she’s doing.”
“Even if she didn’t know about her mom,” Diya replied, “she probably wouldn’t react if someone told her. She has no person­ality at all unless she’s on a stage. If you ask her a question, it’s like you’re asking a piece of cardboard. She’s nothing, nobody, outside of dance.”
“The fact that she’s boring and a mommy’s girl doesn’t make me feel bad for her,” Rippi said. “What does make me angry is that I spent years working for this moment, to get to the International Kathak Classics, just like you two have, and Radha gets to the finals because her mother is having an affair? That’s dirty, and it cheapens our art form.”
Radha felt the radiating sting of Rippi’s words like a punch. Dancers could be mean to each other. She wasn’t completely clueless. But Radha had considered these dancers her peers. Instead they were picking her apart and slut-shaming her mother.
What was worse, they weren’t just talking about her mother cheating, but about her mother doing so to help Radha win a competition that Radha didn’t even care about.
They had to be wrong. Her mother was pushy and demand­ing, but she would never jeopardize their family and Radha’s career like that.
Even as she vehemently denied it in her heart, puzzle pieces from the last few months started to pop into place. Her mother had been acting stranger than usual. Then, last night, she’d said she had to go attend some business meetings. Radha hadn’t thought anything of it before putting on a sleep mask and going to bed.
She hadn’t asked any questions. She never asked questions.
Radha wanted to yell, to scream at Diya, Rippi, and Trish. To show them the cuts and bruises on her feet from her hours of practice. To pull out her training calendar and prove to them that she’d worked just as hard as everybody to get to where she was, maybe even harder. Four a.m. wake-up calls for early-morning practice followed by another three to five hours after school every day. No breaks, no vacations, no friends. Her fa­ther owned an Indian restaurant in Chicago, for God’s sake, but she drank protein shakes and ate steamed veggies every day of her life just to stay in shape.
That only proved Diya’s point, though: that she had no life outside of kathak. When she was a kid, she used to say that kathak gave her “dance joy” and made her feel complete. But where did that leave her? With no personality, and a slew of competitive wins that were now questionable.
She rocked on her heels, and her ghungroos made the faint­est ringing sound. Her breath came short and fast now as her lungs tried to pull in enough air.
Oh my God. Was she having a panic attack? She could tell because it felt familiar, even though she hadn’t experienced one in a long time. She’d been managing her performance anxiety just fine. Especially when she focused on her love for dance, and not the onstage part. But there wasn’t a stage in sight.
Her hand trembled as she pressed her fingertips to her lips. She breathed in deep through her nose, hoping to stop the dizziness, the urge to gasp for air. The hype music began to fade, and the three girls moved in a flurry of ruffling costumes and bells.
“Let’s go,” Rippi said. “We don’t want to be late.”
Radha was still standing in the doorway when they appeared from behind the lockers. Their faces were a study of shock and horror when they saw her.
She didn’t care. Radha watched them for a moment, feeling a sickening sense of satisfaction at their discomfort, before tilt­ing her chin up. Like hell would she let the competition see her trembling, struggling to take deep breaths.
She walked past them, hands fisted, toward the back of the dressing room. Radha focused on putting one foot in front of the other until she reached the table that had been assigned to her.
The surface was covered in tubes, color palettes, hairpins, and safety pins. She picked up her empty bag from the floor and, with one quick jerk of her arm, swept everything into the duffel.
She then went to her locker to put on her coat and shoes. In less than a minute she had all her things together and was ready to go.
Her three competitors were still rooted in the spot where she’d left them.
Radha strode forward until she was nose to nose with Rippi. The twenty-six-year-old looked fake in her stage makeup, with rosy red cheeks and eyeliner that covered most of her lids.
Radha’s voice was as sharp as a blade. “Slut-shaming is a re­flection on you more than anyone else. Don’t ever talk about my mother like that again.”
Rippi jumped and visibly swallowed. She didn’t say another word as Radha walked around her and left the dressing room.
She passed familiar faces, people who touched her arm, as she made her way into the lobby. She was going to keep walking until the sounds of the DJ’s horrible music went away and she could find silence at the hotel.
Her pulse raced as she grew closer and closer to the exit doors. This place was no longer for her.

Book Info:

To All the Boys I Loved Before meets World of Dance in this delectable love story that combines food, dance, and a hint of drama to cook up the perfect romance.

Radha is on the verge of becoming one of the greatest kathak dancers in the world . . . until a family betrayal costs her the biggest competition of her life. Now she has left her Chicago home behind to follow her stage mom to New Jersey. At the Princeton Academy of the Arts, Radha is determined to leave performing in her past and reinvent herself from scratch.

Jai is captain of the Bollywood Beats dance team, ranked first in his class, and is an overachiever with no college plans. Tight family funds means medical school is a pipe dream, which is why he wants to make the most out of high school. When Radha enters his life, he realizes she’s the exact ingredient he needs for a show-stopping senior year.

With careful choreography, both Radha and Jai will need to face their fears (and their families) if they want a taste of a happily ever after.

Book Links: Amazon | B&N | iTunes | Kobo | Google |
 
 

Meet the Author:

Nisha Sharma is the critically acclaimed author of My So-Called Bollywood Life, a Kirkus starred reviewed YA romance, and NPR best book of 2018. She is also the author of The Takeover Effect, a Library Journal starred reviewed adult contemporary romance, and the first installment of The Singh Family Trilogy. Her writing has been praised by Cosmopolitan, Entertainment Weekly, Teen Vogue, Buzzfeed, Hypable, and more.

Nisha lives in New Jersey with her Alaskan husband, her cat Lizzie Bennett, and her dog Nancey Drew. She credits her father for her multiple graduate degrees, and her mother for her love of Jane Austen and Shah Rukh Khan. You can find her online at nisha-sharma.com or on Twitter and Instagram at @nishawrites.
Website | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram | GoodReads |